


Elephant

by piratemistress



Series: Pearls [5]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-11
Updated: 2007-05-11
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:45:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4457096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratemistress/pseuds/piratemistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of Port Royal, Elizabeth finds herself in the middle of a past she thought she’d left behind; Jack begins to relate the tale of his post-mutiny adventures, which include a familiar character or two and several OCs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elephant

  
_Pearl of the elephant, large, powerful and lustreless, worn by kings, born of the winter Solstice, eclipsing Sun and Moon, we seek not beauty, but strength and wisdom amidst the savagery of life.  
  
  
_ “Amelia, I've decided to buy the fish myself,” Elizabeth called to the cook, tying her bonnet under her chin by the front door.  
  
Amelia's generous form soon burst from the hallway that led to the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Oh, heavens no, Miss Elizabeth! Your father'd suffer another spell if he knew I'd let you go off to market on your own.”  
  
Going off to market on her own was in fact precisely what Elizabeth had in mind. She opened the door without another backward glance. “Then we shouldn't have to tell him when he comes back, should we?”  
  
She had been entrusted with enough shillings to see to the household while her father was away in Spanish Town for a few days, and the coins jingled as she descended the steps and crossed the drive, a footman scurrying to open the gate for her while saying, “Leastways 'low me to go with you, Miss.”  
  
“No, thank you,” she said with a smile as she turned down the road that led to town. It was a beautiful day and she preferred to walk. Alone.  
  
It was late enough in the morning that the clouds were beginning to roll in, large and voluminous, white stretched and pulled in all directions against the azure sky. Elizabeth eyed one, as she walked, that seemed to have a rotund body, stubby legs and an elongated nose; an elephant, she decided. She strolled at a leisurely pace down the road, noting the birdsong, the rich colors of the bougainvillea and hibiscus, the breeze that stirred with just a hint of salt from the ocean.  
  
More than the fish, it was this Elizabeth needed: the time to walk and think and move, unhindered, as she pleased. Though her adventures seemed to have ended more than a year ago, she could not quite settle into Port Royal as she once had. She wandered, she explored, she stared, none of which were fitting for an 'unwed lady of her station' as her father _continually_ reminded her, without understanding that the word 'unwed' was both a gross understatement and the sharpest reminder of everything she'd lost.  
  
As if on cue, she turned onto the street that held the smithy. She would not stop, she told herself, only look. She saw Anita, the baker's sister, crossing the street carrying a basket. Elizabeth passed the blacksmith's shop and saw the sign had been taken down. She sighed. So old Smith had finally died of his drink and the shop was Will's, now. She tried to be cheered by it, but kept walking at all costs.  
  
It took another half hour to reach the fish market beside the docks. Shoppers were mostly servants and modest folk, and Elizabeth's expensive dress - even though it was her simplest - still turned heads. She ignored the stares and cast her eyes over the carts and rows of fish, wrinkling her nose at the smell but a bit comforted by it, too.  
  
She chanced a look over her shoulder at the harbor. Several Navy ships were in port, some merchant vessels, and a few others as well. She told herself not to think about the _other_ harbor, the tiny hidden lagoon where the pirate ships dropped anchor when they had to, and never for long. As she turned her head back to the silver glimmer of fish skins she caught sight of a man with long, stringy gray hair and a bulbous nose, in brown and gray sailor's garb that she recognized. She pretended to eye the displays of fresh-caught fish as she strolled in his direction, peering discreetly from beneath her bonnet to make certain.  
  
The man turned, and he caught sight of her, too. He stilled, his already-small eyes narrowing further as she approached him. “Well, Miss Swann,” Bootstrap said in his quavering baritone, glancing up and down. “Never would think to see you here.”  
  
“I _do_ live in Port Royal, still.”  
  
“I suppose so.” There was an awkward pause. She didn't know if he knew, and he didn't seem to want to ask, and so the silence dragged on as people pushed around them in both directions, like water flowing around rocks in a stream. Finally he nodded in the direction she'd come from. “I see the fort's looking better.”  
  
Elizabeth glanced back at the stone structure quickly before answering. “Yes, my father oversaw the last of the repairs a few months ago.”  
  
Bootstrap finally gathered his courage and said, “My son - “  
  
“I haven't seen him,” she replied, the four simple words carrying a world's worth of truth, the weight of the wedding that never was. Unlike the fort, she and Will could not be repaired or rebuilt.  
  
“The rumor's true, then,” he said.  
  
She lacked the nerve to ask which rumor - there might have been any number of them - but he gave a wan smile and shifted the paper-wrapped package of fish under his arm. It was then she realized that he had bought enough fish to _bring back aboard_. Which meant the _Pearl_ was somewhere in the vicinity of Port Royal, which in turn meant that...  
  
“I really must be going,” she said, and when he nodded she whirled around, nearly knocking over a woman and child who were right behind her. She pushed past them and found the smell of the fish suddenly nauseating. A few steps more and she'd reached the end of the market, blindly passing rows of dead eyes and unmoving tails. She saw a row of palm trees that lined the path to the main street, and headed toward them, telling herself she was not going to be sick.  
  
If she weren't ever sick after being kidnappedout to sea for weeks, and nearly _drowned_ five times over, and sailing as a pirate in her own right, she certainly wasn't going to be ill now. She couldn't; not just because the tropical sun was beating down upon her mercilessly and the fish stank horribly and Bootstrap knew which meant _everyone_ probably knew, including _him_ , and perhaps it was only the wreckage of her former life that demanded eviction from her stomach as she stumbled between the palms and was violently sick at their bases.  
  
Afterward, she coughed. She spat. She drew a handkerchief from her silk drawstring bag and patted her face and mouth. She was thankful for the shade of the trees and the relative privacy they offered as she wondered if this was what came of too much of the outside world, no matter how she longed for it as she whiled away the days at home.  
  
When she had sufficiently quieted her stomach and regained proper breathing, she tucked away her handkerchief and turned around to make her way out from between the palms, her eyes still squinting against the sharp contrast of sun and shade. She had taken about six steps when she opened her eyes fully, and saw a familiar figure blocking her path, bathed in sunlight.  
  
Just when she thought the morning could not get any worse, she had come face to face with the man who ruined her life.  
  
He was standing there as confidently as if he owned that particular copse of trees, the soil they grew from, the sunlight itself. She noticed, as she observed him, that he was not nearly so intimidating in direct sunshine. The forceful black of his hair was really a soft brown, earthy, his skin only a bit lighter; his eyes were not dark and piercing but coffee-warmed with amber accents. His bandanna, no blood red but a faded coral, sat lazily above wood-toned brows that sprouted and twisted like tree roots. His mouth twisted, too, into an arrogant smile, as he regarded her.  
  
“Hello, Jack,” she said while she willed breath to enter and leave her lungs regularly.  
  
“Normally I'd kiss you hello, darling, but judging by the smell from those weeds, it's not a good time,” he said, eyes moving from her face down her form.  
  
She set her jaw and took three good strides to face him directly, and spoke very slowly and quietly, each word a weapon on its own. “If you tried to kiss me hello... I'd bite off your tongue and stuff it - “  
  
“Bitter, are we?” he said. “I wondered about that.”  
  
She looked at him for a second more and then walked around him, heading for the stone path. He turned on one foot and followed her.  
  
“You've got a lot of nerve coming here,” she said without turning around. “I suggest you disappear before I find a Navyman to remove you.”  
  
“You've got a lot of nerve, too, patronizing the fish markets all alone and talking to pirates.”  
  
“I'm not talking to pirates. I'm not talking to anyone. I'm going home.”  
  
“To dear Papa?”  
  
They had reached the path and she cast a glance at him through lowered eyelids. “What business is it of yours whom I go home to?”  
  
He smiled, and even his pale yellow teeth looked whiter in the sunlight. “I would so dearly love to know how it happened, too. Won't you come and tell me?”  
  
“Ha!” She turned to go, and would have, too, had he not reached out and caught her wrist. She was arrested in mid-stride and she stumbled a bit, turning to glare at him murderously. “Let me go.”  
  
“I'll be at the Golden Guinea,” he said quietly. “Sneak off once the servants are abed. We'll exchange stories, just like old times, eh?”  
  
The Golden Guinea was a well-known inn not far from the docks, popular with merchants and travelers of all sorts. She knew it, but gave no indication of it, and yanked her hand out of Jack's grasp.  
  
Then her pride got the better of her. “You've gone even more soft in the head if you imagine I'll meet you at an _inn_ as if I were some... common trollop.”  
  
He smiled. “'Course not. Meet me as a common lad. Much safer, wouldn't you agree?”  
  
By answer she gathered her skirts in her hand and strode as quickly as possible up the stone path, not looking back even when she had reached the road.  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
Twelve hours later, she lay on her back in her bedroom, staring at the wardrobe, desk and fireplace, the curtains of her bed, unable to believe that she was actually about to follow Jack Sparrow's instructions.  
  
She had come home and found her father's brandy - first to wash the sour odor from her tongue, then to quell her excitement and anxiety. All the while telling herself she would not really do it - she would not give him the satisfaction of meeting him - she busied herself making preparations. A few items of clothing nicked from the footman's quarters, in whose place she left a few shillings out of guilt, stockings from her father's drawer, though his shoes were two sizes too big and she'd be better off carrying them and wearing her own, in the hopes that no one would look down. Her hair she'd gathered into a long tail at her neck, and her face she'd dirtied on purpose so that no one would look too closely. And one item she'd kept from her adventures, stowed away at the back of her drawer: a hat.  
  
After supper - fish Amelia had had to go and buy herself, after all, since Elizabeth had failed to purchase any - she'd complained of a headache, asked not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and closed and locked her bedroom door from the inside. If they picked the lock or pried it open, she would still have lined up cushions beneath the covers to resemble a sleeping body. Ideally she would have returned in the morning before anyone stirred, let alone missed her.  
  
It was not an easy endeavor. She'd scaled the trellis beneath her balcony before but only once, and only in fun and not in the dark, so she knew it could be done, but she told herself she wasn't actually going to go through with it, that it was ludicrous and bound to land her in even more trouble than she'd had already.  
  
And yet she envisioned throwing caution to the winds and meeting Jack. Only to make him miserable, of course; meeting him only to berate him soundly for the mess he'd made of her life had irony that was appealing.  
  
She contemplated how to sting him in the most tender spot possible as she scaled the gate; she considered where it would hurt Jack the most if she hit him just right; she thought about how unsatisfying it had been to actually kill him and concluded that lengthy suffering was the best revenge.  
  
She was halfway down the dark road when she realized she was smiling.  
  
Over an hour later, she found the Golden Guinea, and entered unnoticed amid the crowd of sailors and barmaids and a few townspeople. She scanned the loud, lively room filled with folks eating and drinking until she spotted a table in the back with six to eight men clustered around it, their shoulders hunched and their faces more or less to the wall. One had dark locks of hair halfway down his back, and she headed in their direction.  
  
“...but I'll tell you, mates,” Jack was saying with grand gesture, “there's no pile of mischief greater than an angry virgin, and that's the truth.” He was met with hearty laughter that continued until someone opposite him looked up and pointed to the boy Elizabeth, who was standing behind him.  
  
He turned with a look of genuine surprise on his face, setting down his mug of ale. “Have no fear, I wasn't talking about _you_ ,” he said to her, and several of the men at the table scratched their heads and glanced at each other in confusion. “Gentlemen, I've some business with this lad,” he said, tipping his hat and climbing off the wooden bench.  
  
“Will it take ye all night?” one of the men said, and the rest burst out laughing again as Jack smiled a menacing smile.  
  
“He who keeps his nose where it belongs, keeps his nose, savvy?” he said, grasping Elizabeth's jacket-clad arm and steering her toward the stairs.  
  
“Where are we going?” she asked as he guided her onto the staircase in front of him.  
  
“To my room,” he answered in a low voice, and she suppressed a little involuntary shudder of anticipation at the words.  
  
He withdrew a rusty key and unlocked the door at the end of the hall, standing back to allow her inside, and then closed the door and went to light a lamp across the room. When he finished and the small room was flickering with dim light, he laid the key on the bedside table and turned to look at her.  
  
She noticed with chagrin that he was back to looking dangerous. The planes and angles of his face, the darkness of his hair and eyes, his forbidding brow all were in sharp relief by the light of flames: firelight, lamplight, candlelight. She supposed she could open the door behind her and run, but she didn't really want to know if he'd chase her. And she was not afraid of him, she reminded herself, underneath the baldric and pistol and sword and scarves he was only a _man_ , after all, whatever kind of man he was.  
  
They stood and stared. Elizabeth realized she didn't know what to say, or how to begin; she wasn't used to beginning social calls with _Well-are-you-glad-you-ruined-my-life_? or anything similar, so there was the ocean in the middle, a gulf as far as the eye could see. He was only across the room but he may as well have been across the Earth. There was so much between them, it was a wonder they could see each other at all.  
  
For the second time that day, she was experiencing a silence of the most awkward kind. Quite unusual, particularly with Jack, for the two of them almost always had _something_ to say, whether it was a question, a story, a barb, an insult, a challenge... even a lover's sigh, but that time was past. Or so she'd vowed, and felt the need to wet her suddenly dry lips, desperately trying to figure out how to begin. She thought she saw his eyes fall to her mouth, to her tongue that had darted out to moisten her lips.  
  
In a second he had crossed the room and crushed her in a bruising kiss, backing her against the door in a heartbeat and plunging his tongue into her mouth with the force of a burst dam, and perhaps that was the dam between them collapsing as he swept her mouth urgently, stirring every muscle and vein in her body to throbbing, flowing life. Her body's reaction infuriated her, and she pulled away, gasping for air. “I didn't come here for this,” she managed to say between deep breaths.  
  
“The hell you didn't,” he muttered and leaned in to kiss her again, only to find she'd turned her head away, and so he kissed her neck instead, opening his mouth under her ear to tease her with his teeth. “I've... missed... you.”  
  
“Pity,” she said in as dry a tone as possible. “If that's even true - coming from you, one never quite knows - it could have been easily prevented.”  
  
He stopped, then, dropping his hands to her sides and taking a step back. “Go on and berate me, then, for last time, if you must. But - given that I missed my ounce of prevention...” He widened his eyes almost innocently, as his tone became a plea. “... I do propose a pound of cure.”  
  
He bent to find her mouth again, but she stopped him with a hand to his lips and pushed back, turning his head away from her and allowing her to walk past. She stopped at the foot of the bed, turning to face him with folded arms. “Whatever you need _curing_ of, I won't be the one giving it. Not a pound. Not an ounce.”  
  
“I suspect you've come to collect a pound of flesh, instead?”  
  
“I've _come_ to relay the news you requested earlier. You ought to understand the consequences of what happened - Will and I - the engagement.”  
  
“Broke it off, did he?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Because?”  
  
She drew in a long, steadying breath, and let it out slowly through her lips, to control her words and voice when they wanted to skip and tremble. “I'm afraid he witnessed the scene outside the fort. It left little doubt that our match was... unwise.”  
  
“Ah.” Jack walked in her direction, passed her and scooped up a bottle of rum from the floor that he must have left there earlier. He uncorked it and swigged, swallowing rapidly. “Scandal?”  
  
“He's kept it quiet, fortunately. So's my father. So've I.”  
  
Jack swished the rum in the bottle thoughtfully. “Not really what I expected to happen.”  
  
“Nor I,” she said with bite, eyeing the rum. He offered it to her, and she took it, taking a long sip before handing it back.  
  
“Care to sit?”  
  
“Thank you, but I really must be going. I should get back before I'm missed.”  
  
Jack smiled, and took a seat on the end of the bed with his free hand spread across his chest in a dramatic gesture. “Tell me, who in all of Port Royal, servant, governor or blacksmith, could possibly miss you at this hour more than I?”  
  
What a snake, she thought even as she smiled at the exaggerated remark, and snatched the rum back from him. After she took a good, long drink, she shoved it back into his hand and wiped her mouth, saying, “Don't you even have the decency to _apologize_?”  
  
He did her the courtesy of not asking what she meant, but said, “No.”  
  
She nodded, once, and then turned toward the door. She'd gotten three steps toward it when he caught her with an arm around her middle and dragged her back against him. She struggled in vain, and hissed, “Get your hands off me!”  
  
“Sh! Listen. No, I won't bloody apologize. You were an equal partner in what happened, and if you deny it you're either daft or telling yourself lies, neither of which bodes well for you.”  
  
She felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes and squeezed them shut, wanting to close out his words, fearing her own weak emotion but more so fearing that he spoke the truth. “The hasty departure was your doing,” she said softly, robbed of strength to fight back any more.  
  
“”Twas for your own good.”  
  
“For _your_ own good, you mean.”  
  
He sighed, dropping his grip on her waist and turning her to face him. “That, too... but didn't I just say I'd missed you?”  
  
“I don't believe you.”  
  
“Take off your satchel and those breeches and I'll prove it to you.”  
  
She scoffed at the notion. “Absolutely not. A girl in every port, is that it?”  
  
“Just the port in every girl.”  
  
“Every whore, you mean.”  
  
His eyes turned down at the corners in a look of patent exasperation. “If I wanted a whore, I'd have brought _her_ up here instead of you. At no small cost to my reputation in these parts, soon as word gets round Jack Sparrow's been spending nights at inns with young lads again.”  
  
“No less than you deserve,” she said, tossing his hands from her waist.  
  
He sighed and dragged a palm across his brows. She sighed, folding her arms across her middle.  
  
“All right, Elizabeth,” he said finally, with a faint smile. “If the pleasures of the flesh are out of the question - though I might remind you I've been at sea for months now, and while pirating has many charms, plentiful female company isn't one of them...” She glared, lifting a brow, as he continued. “...then I propose an exchange. A barter.”  
  
“There's to be no clothing involved. No drinking. No touching, nor sharing of the bed.”  
  
He grinned. “You certainly are imaginative - but no, I was thinking along the lines of the following: your company, considering its risks, in exchange for the next tale I promised you... before.”  
  
She swallowed, squinting at him in the dim light, trying to assess how much she could trust his terms. She was reluctant to believe he'd willingly share her company with no clear benefit for him, unless he imagined he'd seduce her eventually, and was only attempting a less direct approach... but the frankness she saw in his expression led her to conclude he was at least partially telling the truth, and so she nodded, saying, “Very well. And it had better be good.”  
  
He smiled broadly, indicating the wooden chair that sat between the bed and the window. “As good as I can tell it.” He strolled back to the bed, and sat down. “Now I've told you some about my time in Singapore, and what happened after. But I haven't told you how I got there in the first place. It's not a pretty tale, I'll warn you now. And the other thing is... I only remember parts of it, thanks to a lot of rum before, and a lot of opium after. Some things are in sharp relief, clear as day; others are missing, sort of blurry. I make no apologies... but it's sort of like an archipelago... islands in a string, and in between, only water.”  
  
She made herself as comfortable as possible in the chair while he sprawled across the end of the bed, his feet crossed and his hands tucked beneath his head so that he could look up at her from only a foot away. He was upside down, but she supposed that was fitting considering all his tales were backward. “Jack, you know, sometimes it's hard to hear about the effects of something without knowing the causes.”  
  
He looked up at her from below dark-stained lids. “Ah - but there's the key. You see, no one cares much about the causes until they know the effects.”  
  
“Perhaps.” She was offered the rum and she took it, sipping in a restrained fashion as he began the story.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Rum.  
  
After being taken to San Juan by the rum runners, and departing San Juan in haste under circumstances he promised to explain later, Jack Sparrow ended up in Tortuga, where he proceeded to spend the better part of a year completely drunk.  
  
Signing on to a ship occurred to him, but he was sober - which wasn't often - he was firmly convinced that he'd never captain again; when he was drunk, he told anyone who would listen how he was _still_ a bloody captain and he wouldn't be reduced to a deckhand on some scalawag's boat. He worked assorted jobs off and on, but never for long; always it was to buy rum and when he got some he would drink it and that was usually the end of the job. During this time rumors began to circulate about the _Black Pearl_ being cursed, rumors that Jack discounted entirely between gulps from the bottle.  
  
The man being thrown from the tavern - Elizabeth had seen something like this on several occasions, now - at the time was _him_. One evening he woke up in the mud, and found himself being nudged with the toe of a boot. He looked up and saw a strange brown-skinned lad peering down at him from beneath a large hat.  
  
“Get up,” the boy said.  
  
“No,” Jack answered. “Prefer to be horizontal at present.” Mud.  
  
He found himself suddenly yanked up by his filthy shirtfront, and the boy was wearing a stern frown. “You're pathetic,” the boy said in a very smooth, high voice, “but I've heard stories about ye, and so I'll do ye a favor. I'll buy you a bath and a drink, and send you to meet a man who might do you some good.”  
  
Water.  
  
An inn bed, clothes gone, sunlight pouring in. “Where the bloodyhell...”  
  
“Take these,” said the boy's voice again, and a pair of black breeches landed over Jack's head as he tried to sit up, his head pounding. “And this.” A clean shirt, too.  
  
Against the bright light he could just make out the form of the boy from the previous night, except - there was no large hat, and the boy had sprouted long, straight, dark hair. “You're a woman,” Jack muttered, turning the shirt this way and that in an attempt to find a way inside.  
  
“Not to you,” snapped the boy - girl - and then the big hat was back on the head, and he-she was standing by his bedside. “Get dressed and come downstairs. Try not to get drunk on the way.”  
  
“Whatdoye... what on earth have I got to be downstairs for this early in the morning, whoever you are?”  
  
His companion cast a glance at him from the doorway. “It's three in the afternoon,” she said, and slammed the door shut so hard his head throbbed.  
  
  
When he found his way down to the mostly empty tavern, he saw her seated at a table with another man, a very large man with curly gray hair to his shoulders and an equally unruly goatee. He was so large that the chair barely contained him, for breadth and length. He had a pistol tucked in his belt, a large brass buckle on his baldric and an uproarious laugh that Jack heard upon entering the room. It made his head hurt, and he nearly turned around to go back up to bed.  
  
But _she_ saw him. “You!” she called. “Over here.”  
  
Jack reluctantly approached the table, as the large man's eyes fell on him and the woman stood up, quick as a spring releasing. The man sat back, stroking his beard, looking Jack up and down. “Well, he don't look like much,” the man said.  
  
“If it's size you're after, few could compare with yourself,” Jack said testily.  
  
The man's eyes widened and then he opened his mouth and laughed, heartily, pounding one hand on the table before he sat forward again. “Well, Jack Sparrow, you're clever, I'll give ye that.” He indicated the woman with a quick toss of his large head. “Ana here says there might be something more to you than constant bragging and a mess o' hair.”  
  
“Why don't we have a spot o' rum and settle that question?” Jack said, dragging out a chair.  
  
“I think not, my friend,” the man said, and Jack noticed that the man's eyes were gray, deep and even as stone. “Clever you are, but not too wise. You've had enough rum to last you a lifetime in less than a year, as I hear tell.”  
  
Jack shrugged carelessly, drumming his fingers on the table. “What's it matter to you? What do you want with me? Who are you, anyway?”  
  
“He's Captain Bartholomew Alberts,” snapped the woman - Ana, the other man had called her - and Jack noticed for the first time a marked accent in her forceful speech. “And you'll listen well, if you know what's good for you.”  
  
By means of a hand at her elbow Alberts indicated that Ana should leave them, and she turned away and crossed the tavern to the door.  
  
  
Water.  
  
  
Jack was the first mate on Alberts' ship, the _Lotus Gloria_. A most unusual ship, with a most unusual crew and a most unusual captain. Alberts was a different sort of man, more adventurer than pirate, always looking for unique opportunities. Anamaria was to have served on the crew as well, as she'd been on voyages with him before, but at the last minute she'd withdrawn, after learning that Alberts planned to cross the world on this trip. All the way to the Orient.  
  
To Jack, as far away from the Caribbean as possible sounded wonderful. The farther he got from the Caribbean, the less he was reminded of the _Pearl_. Alberts knew some of the story by rumor, but eventually got some of it out of Jack. He'd noticed the pistol, and when Jack explained it to him, he'd only chuckled and said, “Well, Sparrow, keep your anger in there, then. Put it all in that pistol, and when you fire it, let it go. For he who angers you, controls you - make no mistake. As long as you are consumed with anger for your mutinous first mate, you'll never be your own man.”  
  
Jack was astounded that Alberts had made him the first mate without even knowing him. He spent a good deal of time talking to him in Tortuga, that was true; but at first Jack thought Alberts a fool. He didn't even trust himself; how could anyone else? But something about the man convinced Jack to agree. He was tired of waking up in the mud, of trying to find rum so he could forget the miserable state of his life. Perhaps Alberts was a fool, but Jack wasn't quite; he wouldn't waste the opportunity.  
  
For such a large man, Alberts was amazingly light on his feet. He would often spar with Jack when there was a lull in activity on deck. He never said anything about how Jack handled the sword, or where he struck, or how he moved; his instructions were strange things like “You're breathing so loud they'll hear you in Calcutta,” or, “Think about how you'll bring me down, not how you'll slice me up,” or, “Look at ye, ready to fall over! If ye do that, ye've done my work for me.”  
  
Jack frequently lost at sparring.  
  
The most unusual member of their complement was not Alberts himself. It was his girl. Not lover - a girl of about ten. A daughter, or so he called her. Jack had been quite surprised to learn that she stayed aboard ship with him. A ship was no place for a child, let alone a girl, but the _Lotus Gloria_ was apparently what she called home. Her name, as Jack learned, was Easter. She was quite obviously not Alberts' flesh and blood, for her skin was the color of tanned leather, and her hair dark as night. She was thin and bones jutted out at all angles beneath her simple dresses. One night soon after they'd set out, Jack asked Alberts about her.  
  
“Have you heard of Easter Island, friend?” Alberts said. It was always “friend” to his crewmen - not “mate,” not “scurvy dog,” or anything similar. He could roar with the best of them - and no man ever argued - but as far as conversation went he was rather easygoing.  
  
Jack admitted he hadn't.  
  
“Few years back, a Dutchman - Roggeveen - sailed a fleet of ships off the west coast of South America. Twenty-seventh parallel - nigh the bottom of the world, on Easter day they stumbled on an island far from everywhere. A world unto itself. I'd heard stories but didn't believe them, until we were sailing from Tahiti and we came across it ourselves. We were low on supplies and so we risked the stop, not knowing if the natives would be friendly or hostile.”  
  
“Now this was a bizarre place, Sparrow. Strangest statues you ever saw lining the coast, watching the water like sentries. We found a harbor and a man rowed out to us in a canoe - he was bearded and dressed minimally in natural things. Over the next few days we visited them and they visited us, groups of them coming out to the ship and running their hands over everything, amazed at how everything worked.”  
  
“Well, they didn't have much in the way of provisions. I gathered their little island wasn't doing too well far as agriculture - everyone seemed thin and there weren't many farms or animals that we could see. We set sail on the third day, and we were two days away from the island when one of the men found a stowaway.”  
  
“Easter,” Jack said.  
  
“Aye. Wearing bits of grass and not much else, I'll say. She didn't speak our tongue, nor we hers, so communication was all but impossible. But she saw when we turned the ship around to take her back, and started screaming and crying something terrible. She was only eight, mind you, but it was clear to us she was of no mind to be taken back there.”  
  
“And you immediately ceded to the wisdom of the girl throwing the tantrum, reversed course and kept her for your own?” Jack prodded, sure there was more to it.  
  
“Oh, not a whit, not a whit. Just when we'd reversed course, a storm began to blow up. A fierce one, and it seemed to be coming from back that way. Well, girl or no girl, no sailor sails _in_ to a storm on purpose, and I gave the order to turn back and we rode the crest of the storm as far as we could. In the meantime I'd taken the girl into my protection - I trusted my men, but one can never know for certain - and she'd made the ship her playground, running from one end to the other, wanting to hoist the lines, climbing to the crow's nest like she was born to it. Her hair was full of lice and so we had to cut it off, which made her cry, but for the next year or so she passed for a boy quite nicely. It's grown back now. She picked up English like a sponge. After a few months she'd learned enough to talk about simple, everyday things, and after a year, she finally had the words to tell me what had happened.”  
  
Jack waited patiently while Alberts scratched his beard. Then he continued: “She said... there was no food some years, and that year was a bad year. She said her parents went away so that everyone could eat.” Alberts looked at Jack, soberly. “D'ya reckon what they ate, then?”  
  
“I suppose I can,” Jack answered, suppressing a shudder. “And how she stowed aboard?”  
  
“She followed the men who came to look at the ship, climbed aboard and hid. She'd heard stories about the other Big Boats, they had called them, from years before, and knew that the Big Boats went away from there. Well, she's my charge, now. She'd have made a fine sailor, I think. Smart girl. Lots of pluck.”  
  
“I'll say,” Jack answered. He immediately felt an affinity with this girl; he knew about stowing away, and he knew about leaving a so-called home not caring where one ended up, as long as it wasn't there.  
  
  
Water.  
  
  
“I've been wanting to know,” Jack said to Alberts one night, taking the helm from him. “Why me? You could have had your pick of men, most of them in better shape than I was.”  
  
Alberts threw back his head and laughed, and while Jack waited for his ears to stop ringing he checked their course. Soon Alberts clapped him on the shoulder. “You're right, Sparrow. Any number of men might ha' filled this post. But none so clever as you. I wanted to meet the man who gave Hernando Ruiz a run for his money - literally, too.”  
  
“Heard about that, did you?” Jack said, his hands settling comfortably upon the wooden spokes.  
  
“Why, every man in Tortuga'd heard about it in two weeks,” Alberts said. “Ruiz was furious to find out he'd been hornswaggled. It's a good thing you got out of San Juan in a hurry, and that he went off to sea soon after. If he'd a mind to chase ye down, you'd be in some hot water.”  
  
Jack chuckled. “I'm not terribly worried about him.”  
  
Alberts' eyes became somber then, clear as the moonlight. “Well, you ought to be, and that's why you're clever and still not wise, my friend. He's a dangerous man, just the other side of insane. The devout Catholic masks the monster, Sparrow. He's mad. His favorite thing to do - his preferred method to kill a man - is to slice a man through the gut and then tell him to crawl. He follows him while the man bleeds to death in his own hands, and watches while the man chokes with his last breath.”  
  
“Yes, well,” Jack said, feeling as though his simple supper of grog and hardtack was contemplating rebellion somewhere inside of him, “by my calculations we're half a world away from the likes of him.”  
  
“God willing,” Alberts said, tipping his hat good-naturedly. “I'll see you in the morning, Sparrow.” It was what he always said to Jack, whether they parted in the evening or at mid-day, with the same tip of his hat. While Alberts was alive, while Jack knew him, Jack could never have imagined that it would be those words, that gesture that would haunt him, evaporating like mist upon waking or echoing in the distant lullaby of waves.  
  


5\. Elephant - Part Two  
  
  
Water.  
  
The middle Atlantic. Evening. Jack spied a large ship in the distance, headed the opposite way. Likely they'd pass without sighting the _Lotus Gloria_ , but he called Alberts to be sure.  
  
He handed the large man the glass in the setting sun. Close behind was Easter, whose feet were bare and dress a bit dirty, her hair wild, with a nonetheless content expression on her face. Alberts peered through the telescope, then shook his head. “A slaver, to be sure.” He lowered the glass.  
  
“What's that mean?” said Easter, who was at a stage where everything was a question. There were many English words she didn't know, but she remembered them immediately; she seemed to grow and learn unnaturally fast, although Jack thought perhaps children always seem that way to adults.  
  
At her question, Jack and Alberts exchanged worried glances, and Alberts turned to the girl with a stern look. “There's things for ye to know, and things not to think on - run along, you,” he almost growled at her, but she laughed, turning and dashing off down the deck.  
  
“Maybe you ought to tell her,” Jack said. “It's not as if she won't ask someone else.”  
  
“How do you explain _that_ to a child?”  
  
“Tell her the world's an ugly, cruel place. The sooner she learns it, the better.”  
  
Alberts shook his head. “You're wrong, friend. The longer she goes without knowing it, the happier she'll be.”  
  
A few days later, Jack appeared for his watch to find Easter seated on a coil of line, eagerly watching another man carve an animal out of the good part of some rotten boards they'd replaced. He carved skillfully, shaping the animal's back and tail.  
  
“Look, Sparrow,” she said excitedly - she mimicked Alberts in everything, even his terms of address - “he's making an animal.”  
  
“So I see.”  
  
“It's a - what's it called?” she said to the crewman, who smiled a partially toothless smile.  
  
“An elephant,” the man said.  
  
“Elephant,” Easter repeated, turning wide eyes on Jack. The word was as new to her as it might have been to a child several years younger, but so were many things in the world. “It has a long nose. Have you ever seen one?”  
  
“Can't say as I have,” Jack mused. “But I'm sure I shall someday. And you too.”  
  
He turned and walked toward the helm, and a few moments later he had the eerie sensation of being watched. He glanced over his shoulder to see Easter watching him intently from a few feet away, her wild hair tossed by the breeze.  
  
“Cook said they take people and chain them up and sell them,” she said when she caught Jack's eye. “Is that true?”  
  
Jack sighed, pretending he didn't know what she meant. “That doesn't sound right, does it?”  
  
“It sounds awful.”  
  
“Then you must have got it wrong, love. Go ask your papa.”  
  
“He said I'll understand someday. But I want to know now.”  
  
“You'll know soon enough,” Jack replied, turning away in the hopes she'd consider the conversation closed. He wasn't so fortunate - she waited for him to turn his gaze to her again. “You're still here?”  
  
“Will I understand when I grow into a man?” she said with an earnest tilt of her head.  
  
Jack's eyes widened. “You _really_ ought to talk with your papa about that.”  
  
Talk they must have, for near a week later Alberts, sweating profusely, approached Jack on deck. He clapped him on the shoulder with one large, meaty hand. “Sparrow, bad news.”  
  
“You're going back to rationing me rum?”  
  
“No, worse,” he chuckled. “Clear out o' that cupboard passes for a mate's cabin. I'm afraid it's not proper for the girl to sleep in wi' me any more. She's grown to an age.”  
  
Later that night, after his watch, Jack headed out of habit down toward the cabin, before he remembered he no longer slept there; he turned to head down to the crew deck, when he heard the distinct sound of weeping from inside. He cringed. Sniveling children were not his specialty, but he considered fetching someone else to deal with it, when suddenly the door flew open. She must have heard his footsteps.  
  
Her round eyes were puffy and her nose wet and running, and she sniffed most indelicately as she stared at him from the partially open door.  
  
“What's the matter, love?” he heard himself saying, pausing in his departure against his better judgment.  
  
She gave a great sigh, staring up at him with interest. “Papa says I shall never grow into a man like him.”  
  
Jack couldn't restrain a smile, and bent his knees, crouching to face her. “Is that all?”  
  
“Yes - but that's _awful_.”  
  
“Don't you remember your mum? You're going to be like her,” he said in as soothing a tone as possible. “And Anamaria. Her, too.”  
  
“My mum went away,” Easter said in a soft voice. “And Ana's not sailing with us any more.”  
  
“Yes, that's true,” Jack acknowledged, trying to think of what to say. It was hard because an adult would have been easily deceived by a clever story or quick comment, but children were so terribly perceptive. It made it much harder to lie, almost impossible, which to Jack was almost like cutting out his tongue. “So you're going to grow into a woman, and sooner than you think. But that doesn't mean you won't have adventures. You're having one right now, sailing the world with Cap'n Alberts. Aren't you having fun?”  
  
She nodded somberly.  
  
“Well, and you're going to go on doing as you're doing now. You're going to see lots of exciting things. You're going to see a real elephant someday, eh?”  
  
She sniffed and nodded, dragging her wrist across her nose. Jack produced a handkerchief and gave it to her, squeezing her once on her bony, narrow shoulder. “There, now. Our captain says we're not far from Zanzibar. Have you even been there?”  
  
She shook her head no, wiping her nose and eyes with the handkerchief.  
  
“Well, there'll be lots to see there. I promise.” He didn't know what he was promising at the time, though his statement did turn out to be true. “Good night, my little stowaway,” he said with a playful touch of his knuckles to her cheek. He stood.  
  
“See you in the morning, Sparrow,” she said with a haughty sniff, turning to enter the tiny cabin and close the door.  
  
Zanzibar.  
  
The Portuguese had been easily evicted scores of years before, but there was still trade and profit to be had in Zanzibar. They were to exchange part of their cargo of rum for a shipment of indigo, gum, and some gold. There was another option, but it was not one that Alberts was prepared to accept.  
  
They disembarked to purchase supplies, and Easter pleaded incessantly to accompany them, insisting that “Sparrow had promised” she be allowed to go along - which was true, although Jack hadn't thought about the dangers or the complications at the time. Alberts would be busy negotiating with his contacts, but he reluctantly agreed to permit Easter to leave the ship as long as she did not leave Jack's sight. They found some cloth to cover her head and shoulders, and Jack took her tightly by the hand as they set off to explore the city in the late morning. He held her hand in his left; his right fell at his side, next to his sword. The fact that Alberts trusted Jack with his daughter's life was not something to be taken lightly.  
  
“Look, an elephant,” Jack said to her as they passed a pack-laden animal in the chaotic street.  
  
She turned her head excitedly, only to frown at the sight of the chewing, tail-swishing camel. “ _That's_ not an elephant,” she said, sounding both annoyed and disappointed.  
  
“It's not?” Jack replied in an innocent tone, continuing down the street with the many customers of the open market. They only spent a few hours getting strange looks from the vendors and other people trafficking the crowded street within a cloud of dust that never seemed to pass, and then headed back to the harbor.  
  
It was as they approached the docks from a different direction than they'd left that Jack spied the platform a few hundred yards away, lined with rows of unclothed people, and the cluster of shouting men in front of it, men in robes and turbans scrambling up and down and between the people negotiating prices. He turned immediately to take another route to the ship, but Easter had already seen.  
  
“What are they selling over there?” she asked, pointing an arm that swung as Jack did an about-face.  
  
“Nothing. They've sold out - that's why there's nothing there.”  
  
“They sold their clothes, too?”  
  
“Yes, even those.” Jack marched as fast as he could in the opposite direction, dragging a stubborn Easter along with him.  
  
“And the people - why are they so dark? Have they been in the sun too long?”  
  
Jack sighed, feeling his chest constrict as he thought about educating the girl rather than protecting her... but some instinct made him continue on, as fast as possible, away from the slave market. “Yes, darling, I think they probably have,” he said very quietly. It was not exactly a lie.  
  
Upon returning to the ship, he returned her to Alberts no worse for wear, though he might not have said the same thing for himself.  
  
The attack came during the night, two days later.  
  
Jack was thrown from his hammock with a terrible crash and lurch of the entire ship. His eyes shot open wide. He'd been woken like that several times before in his life; each time it had been the last morning he woke up on that particular ship.  
  
Cannon fire. It sounded again, and the deafening roar of splintering wood and splitting beams resulted. Jack was on his feet in an instant, looking around to see that men had begun to race above deck, the alarm bell ringing a frantic knell from the deck.  
  
“Get back below!” Jack yelled after them. “Form your teams! Load the guns!” He was thrown against the side of the staircase as another shot struck the ship, and a man fell down a few rungs above him. Jack caught him and the two of them landed on the floor of the crew deck. He pushed the man aside, seeing it was Gibbs, an often-drunk ex-Navy man, and he was all right. Jack scrambled up the steps through thickening smoke. “Didn't you hear me?” he yelled to the men rushing headlong to the rail to see the attacking ship. “I said...” And Jack realized that he'd begun to shout orders without even thinking about it, having forgotten that he wasn't actually the captain. Of course, they ought to have obeyed their first mate. But perhaps they didn't hear him.  
  
Turning from the rail, he collided with Alberts - no small event, and Jack reached back to steady himself on a yardarm. “Captain,” Jack said, the word feeling strange on his lips after so many years. “Who's blasting us? Why?”  
  
“They've been trailing us since Zanzibar. Someone didn't like us meddling in their rum trade.” Alberts suddenly reached out to haul Jack forward by his shirt. “Sparrow,” he hissed in a voice Jack had never heard him use. “Get my daughter and bring her up here. Quickly, safely. Do you hear? Find her now!”  
  
“Aye,” was all Jack could manage as he was nearly tossed in the direction of the steps.  
  
“ _Man the guns_!” he heard Alberts bellowing across the deck as he began to climb down.  
  
There was smoke and broken wood everywhere as Jack went below to pound on the door of the first mate's cabin. Some of the lanterns had broken and it was dark; there was no answer from inside, and Jack finally threw open the door, his heart sinking when he saw the small room was empty. It figured. When Easter became afraid, she ran and hid. It was all she knew to do.  
  
He steadied himself on the doorframe as more blasts rocked the vessel, and then he finally heard return fire from a deck below. The girl wasn't in her cabin, but she had to have been awakened. Where would she have gone? Jack took off for the steps and descended another deck, all the while frantically listing in his mind all the places a frightened girl might hide on a great bloody ship. It was too long a list, and she was too small a girl.  
  
Then he remembered something. When she wasn't trailing Alberts - or Jack himself - one of Easter's favorite places was in the galley with the cook. With renewed speed he climbed down and made his way there, holding on to walls and barrels and anything else that came to hand. When he reached the galley, it was dark and pitifully empty, and just when Jack was about to renounce hope, the ship was hit by another cannonball, and a whimper seemed to come from inside the massive iron pot that swung suspended by chains. He caught the edges and peeked inside.  
  
A pair of wild, dark eyes looked back at him from inside the empty cauldron. It was where she'd hidden, according to the crew, when she first stowed away, though she must have been a little smaller then. Still, she had managed to fold her thin frame like a map, her cheek pressed to her knees, her head just below the lip of the giant pot. His immediate relief swelled rapidly into anger. “Get the hell out of there,” he said, reaching in and yanking the girl up by her arms. She had gotten heavier, he realized, since the last time he'd helped her get down from somewhere she'd climbed.  
  
With effort he dragged her out of the pot, limbs, hair and all, and set her on her bare feet; the girl promptly burst into sobs, and Jack sighed, content for a second to wrap his arms around her petite form and squeeze, oddly comforted by the warmth in her small frame, before he shook it off and stood up straight. “Come along. Now.”  
  
He practically dragged her back above deck, not stopping even when she screamed at the sight of a dead man, his still-open eyes beside a bloody gash in his temple.  
  
When they reached the deck all was chaos. Cannon fire continued, deep and steady like a drum of war. Alberts roared orders as men ran this way and that in the smoke. Easter tore herself from Jack's grasp and ran to wrap her arms around her papa's broad middle, breaking into a fresh round of tears, but he only tousled her hair, an expression of immense relief on his face, before he peeled her arms from him and shoved her back toward Jack.  
  
“Ready a longboat,” he said to Jack. “Take those three men, there. You're getting off the ship.”  
  
“Have you gone completely mad?” Jack approached the captain, hands clenched into fists. “You need me, here, if we're to win this.”  
  
“I want her off the ship. And you with her, to look after her. That's an order,” Alberts growled back.  
  
“First off, I'm a pirate, not a nurse, and say we did - where would we go?”  
  
Alberts inclined his head to port, and Jack looked out to see the vague shadow of an island, barely visible in the dawn light. “Ride out the battle.”  
  
“I can't do that,” Jack said, reaching for his sword. “Send her with Gibbs and the other two.”  
  
Jack suddenly found himself lifted onto his toes, Alberts' gray eyes wide and bulging, a vein throbbing ominously in his temple. “Follow yer goddamn orders or I'll cut ye down right now!” he shouted, punctuating the last word with a violent shake. “If we win or lose it'll be without you. Now get the bloody hell off my ship!”  
  
Easter sobbed loudly from behind them, and Jack eyed Alberts' desperate expression warily.  
  
“Only a fool puts the good of a single person - child or not - above the needs of his ship and crew,” Jack argued boldly, glancing down to see Alberts' enormous hands flexing on his shirtfront.  
  
“Aye, well, someday you'll understand,” Alberts retorted, setting Jack back on his feet. “Now go.”  
  
They went. As the longboat was lowered, Jack was restraining a frantic Easter who naturally refused to leave her father's side. Alberts leaned over the rail as the cannons boomed around them.  
  
“Sparrow - if it don't go well, here, take her to Singapore. I've a friend there by the name of Chao Quin, who'll help her, find a place for her.”  
  
Easter let out a choking sob, and Jack wrapped one arm securely around her neck. “How do I find him?”  
  
Alberts smiled, but hurriedly replied, “Everyone in Singapore knows Chao Quin!” He turned to go as the ship lurched, but then leaned back to call over the side, “See you in the morning, Sparrow!” before disappearing from view, his sword drawn and a menacing grin upon his huge face.  
  
_This isn't right_ , Jack thought as he rowed with the other three toward the island, staring all the while at the ship. The other ship was of equal size but superior firepower, and Jack surmised that they would settle for nothing short of total destruction of the _Lotus Gloria_. It occurred to him that reaching the island and enduring the battle safely was no guarantee; they would be stranded on the island with no means except for the small longboat. What would happen to them?  
  
Jack would have taken a more aggressive strategy, send a boarding party to the other ship to start cutting them down. That meant sending several men to their deaths, it was true, but every time Jack had told himself it was the right decision. And every time he was among the first to swing aboard.  
  
From the beach, he watched through the spyglass. The cannons ceased; the other ship drew nearer; he observed men jumping overboard, scrambling into the sea. They'd been boarded. A short while later, everything quieted. Jack frowned, feeling his stomach turn. A surrender. The battle was done. The _Lotus Gloria_ was still afloat, but no more than a wreck. He saw a few men swimming for the island. All the while Jack breathed deep, in and out, each breath a crest of anger.  
  
“Is it over?” said a small voice from behind him. He lowered the glass and looked down at Easter, her arms wrapped around her middle. In the vague dawn light, she was little more than a shadow, her skirt and hair blending into the mist that had settled on the beach.  
  
He realized he couldn't answer her. He had no will left to lie, and an honest answer wouldn't spring to his lips - _he's likely dead_ , or _the ship's done for_ , or anything that would confirm that she'd just watched her world be ripped to shreds. He heard an odd echo, then, of his own world splitting and cracking, and it was the sound of Barbossa's laugh as Jack hit the water. He'd stood on a beach and watched his life fade into the distance. He'd been powerless to stop it, then.  
  
But he wasn't powerless now.  
  
Easter jumped back, her eyes wide, and he realized it was because he'd unsheathed his sword and was wielding it, menacingly, gesturing with its point. He found his voice. “No,” he said. “No, it's not bloody over.”  
  
He turned and strode away to where the other three men sat, dazed, upon the beach. “Get up,” he ordered quietly, and he was met with looks of confusion. “Get _up_ ,” he repeated. “Get back in the boat.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Boat - what for?”  
  
Jack lifted his sword and pointed it at each of them in turn. “Unless you all want to die like dogs, of whatever kills you first - thirst or hunger or wild beast, or meself - you'll get back in that boat and row like there's no tomorrow. Because there won't be, if we don't at least _try_ to capture the ship.”  
  
“But - “ one of the men glanced out to sea, at the smoking hulk of the _Lotus Gloria_. “But there's nothing left of her.”  
  
Jack smiled a dangerous smile. “Not that ship. The other one.” He paused while one man scratched his head. “Our advantage is that no one even knows we're here, or that we have a boat. We have to try. And if we fail, we'll have taken down a good many of them, for our part, won't we?”  
  
“A suicide attack? That's your plan? Four against... however many?”  
  
“Oh, it's not so grim,” Jack said, walking behind them to approach the boat. “After all, one of our four is ever-yours-truly Captain Jack Sparrow. I say I count for at least ten throats on me own. How many throats you gents reckon you can cut? Get in. We're going.”  
  
“Aye,” one growled and moved to assist Jack in sliding the boat back into the water. Jack looked up and saw it was Gibbs, who continued with a sharp inclination of his head, “What about... the girl?”  
  
Jack turned to say _I'd say her throat-cutting days are still in front of her_ , when the girl in question emerged from the treeline and ran down the beach to where Jack was climbing in the boat.  
  
“We're leaving?” she said, her hands twisting in her skirt fabric.  
  
“You're not,” Jack said. “Stay out of sight.”  
  
“Here? No.” She climbed hurriedly into the boat. “I'm going along too. I want to help Papa.”  
  
“No, you're not going,” he said, and picked her up by the waist, depositing her outside the boat.  
  
“You can't... you can't just _leave_ me here, alone. You can't,” she said, and Jack saw the tears welling again, though she tried to blink them away.  
  
“Look, it's not safe,” he said, trying to sound authoritative without terrifying the chit. “You'll only be by yourself for a short while. We'll be back soon.”  
  
“What if you don't come back?” Her breath hitched on the words, and Jack felt a sudden chill despite the warm morning. The other men stilled in their efforts to ready the boat. She was very right to worry. The chances of their return were far from certain.  
  
Jack sighed, and swung his legs over the edge of the boat to stand on the sand beside her. He crouched and met her eyes, large and wet as they were with tears. “Listen, love. First, I'm going to come back. I'll prove it to you. Look.” He withdrew the strand of pearls from a tiny pouch strapped to his baldric, and held them out to her. “These are my lucky pearls. Hold on to them for me.”  
  
He placed them in her palm, their different-sized globes pale against her skin the color of wet sand.  
  
“Don't you need them, if they're lucky?” Easter said, nonetheless clutching the strand tightly in her fist.  
  
“Not if I give them to someone very, very special,” he answered in as low a tone as possible, not wanting the men to overhear, “because knowing _you_ have them will bring me more luck than I could ever need.”  
  
She was silent, staring at the pearls in her hand.  
  
“If it takes me a really long time, you're a brave girl and a smart one, and you know where to look for food and things like that just like you did back home, till someone comes to get you. All right? Be strong, now... my little stowaway.”  
  
She nodded, tearfully, and she would have reached her arms around his neck had he not caught her wrists and put them down. “No goodbyes,” he said, standing and turning his back. “I'll be back before you know it. It'll be all right... you'll see.”  
  
They set off. It was foolhardy, certainly; Jack was counting on the element of surprise, and though they pulled quite a few men out of the water who'd abandoned ship, if the men on the other ship stopped celebrating long enough to look for a boat in the water, they'd be done for. They came around the side of the _Lotus Gloria_ , and Jack stopped them against the hull, out of sight.  
  
“Wait here,” he said, getting up and finding the rungs to climb up to the deck. “I want to see if there's anyone left aboard.” He was met with silence; they knew he meant friends as well as enemies, and it was quite risky to do it by himself, but he was determined and no one tried to stop him.  
  
He peered across the ruined deck while standing on the rungs, seeing only destruction. Wood and line lay everywhere in shreds, but there was no one in sight. He pulled himself up. Everything was eerily quiet except for the distant sounds of men shouting on the other ship, only twenty-five yards or so away. He kept to the edges of the deck, not wanting to be seen.  
  
There was a dark puddle in the center of the deck, he saw, and he edged toward it, hoping it wasn't what his gut told him it was. As he got closer, he saw the small pool was smeared out in a line, and he gritted his teeth. It was, in fact, blood. He followed the smear with his eyes and saw it led to a trail; small drops and smears of blood led all the way across the deck.  
  
He closed his eyes for a moment. Following a trail of blood meant wondering whose it was, longing to know and fearing to know at the same time. But the need to know won out, and as he took slow steps, his eyes moving over the spots, handprints and stains of blood in a path, he thought that there was so much blood... that one person could not possibly _have_ this much blood. Someone had dragged himself across the ship, stumbling or on hands and knees, feeling his life bleed out of him.  
  
Certainly no one could lose this much blood and live. His chest tightened as he realized where the trail led; to the captain's cabin. He suspected whose blood it was, now, and with a heavy heart he proceeded across the deck to where the door stood partially open, swinging back and forth with the gentle rocking of the ship.  
  
He steadied the door's movement with a hand, and looked inside.  
  
Alberts lay facedown on the floor, his open eyes bulging wide, his hands and face pale. He was still. Blood sat collected beneath his midsection, and Jack had the sense of following a river to the sea; the trail ended there. He walked slowly to Alberts' body, his boots making little sound on the floor, and he crouched beside his head, reaching out after a moment to shut the man's eyes with his fingertips.  
  
“See you in the morning, friend,” Jack said morosely, taking one last look before rising to his feet.  
  
“Or sooner than that, _señor_ ,” said a chillingly familiar voice.  
  
Jack drew his sword even as he turned to see who had spoken. Some part of him knew, already, and so it was with only a little surprise that he confirmed the identity of the man now rising from a chair. He'd been sitting calmly, watching Alberts die.  
  
Hernando Ruiz.  
  
“So it's you, is it?” Jack said, taking a few steps to his left, away from Alberts' body. “Let me guess, rum in the Caribbean was only a stepping stone, eh? You're into bigger things, now.”  
  
“Quite right, _señor_. A little rum, still, though the products of Africa are more profitable.” Ruiz crossed, too, sword in hand, keeping a few feet away from Jack. They were circling each other. “Of course I leave the actual handling of the cargo to others, with bigger ships. It's a... what's that word? _Messy..._ enterprise.”  
  
Jack's lip curled back. “Can't stand a little competition? That's why you attacked us?”  
  
“Very bad for business. And also, Montes saw you in Zanzibar.”  
  
“He did, eh?”  
  
“I thought he was imagining things until he said you were with a young girl. I had heard you joined Alberts' ship of fools, and I knew right away the girl had to be Alberts' brat. His little pet, his native island rat. I was sorry not to find her here. Tell me... is she friendly or... fiesty? I asked your captain, but he wouldn't say.”  
  
Jack swallowed bile, squeezing the handle of his sword more firmly as he crossed his feet one over the other, facing Ruiz as he did the same. “Careful, mate. I'm going to kill you, but I might decide to let you choke on your own bollocks if you say anything more about her.”  
  
“So sensitive, _señor_!” Ruiz smiled cruelly, taking a small step forward, toward Jack. “You must have had her, pirate that you are,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Tell me, did she scream?”  
  
_He's only trying to rile me_ , Jack told himself, breathing in through his bared teeth. He reminded himself that Ruiz was a man who would seek and seize upon another's weakness, any one he could find. He willed his voice to be calm as he said, “For a man who claims to be devout, you seem to know a lot about the darker side of worldly goods.”  
  
Ruiz grinned. “The gold calls to me... but then, you knew that, didn't you, from your little trick. The Almighty will surely strike down a man who scoffs at His sacraments.”  
  
“Pride comes before a fall, amigo,” Jack retorted. “So we'll see who's struck down first, won't we?”  
  
Steel collided with steel and the swords sang a high, metallic note.  
  


5\. Elephant - Part Three  
  
Jack stared into the cold, beady eyes of Ruiz as he tightened his grip on his own sword. He wondered, as he sometimes did when entering a battle, if this were the last sight he'd ever see: the soulless depths of a madman's eyes. He struck out.  
  
This was not play. It was not a simple show of skill, a contest, a squabble over something of little significance. Jack meant to kill him at any cost. At that moment he hated him even more than Barbossa, even more than all the other real bastards he'd known in his life.  
  
Ruiz's sword was well-crafted and fine. It handled beautifully as he lunged at Jack, first high, then low. Jack advanced and they shuffled out onto the deck, sidestepping fallen yardarms and torn pieces of line and canvas. Jack's sword was merely functional, like a hundred others from the cache, but he kept it quite sharp; before he'd disembarked in Zanzibar, he'd sharpened it to a hair-splitting edge.  
  
It was this that Jack drew across Ruiz's bare fingers as they wrapped around the handle. Ruiz swore in Spanish and then laughed, tossing the sword to his other hand, blood oozing from the wound.  
  
“Such tiny cuts won't save you, _señor_.”  
  
Jack raised his sword to block a skillful blow that aimed for his midsection, pushing back against Ruiz who had stepped out, bending his knee. In a quick motion he untangled his sword and on the upswing drew his blade across the inside of Ruiz's thigh. A deep wound. There was an artery there he'd been aiming for, but he wasn't sure he'd gotten it. Leg wounds could kill, too.  
  
“Sparrow, are you going to prick me to death?” Ruiz staggered back, maintaining his self-assured grin.  
  
“If you've even got one, that's an idea, too,” Jack said, feinting for the other man's loins, but tipping up at the last moment to catch his neck. Another scratch, straight across. Not deep enough.  
  
“Useless blows. You're wasting your last moments,” Ruiz laughed, and then launched a full attack with both sides of his blade, skipping and turning, advancing too close. Jack retreated as he blocked, finding himself backed against the rail.  
  
“Tell me,” Ruiz breathed, as their swords and elbows met with equal force, both of them pushing as hard as they could. “How does it feel to know you caused them all to die? If you'd died a lonely drunk on that island, I'd have no reason to pursue you. Alberts would be alive. The crew. The ship whole. All because of you, _señor_. And the little girl... where is she, hm? After I kill you I will find her, you know.”  
  
Jack told himself to close his ears, to refuse to listen to a man who would say anything to disturb him, to break his concentration, but the words sank into his mind, and the bitch of it was, they were true. It _was_ his fault. Not all... but enough. His strength ebbed. He was leaning farther back over the rail.  
  
_The girl..._ what he might do to her...  
  
Jack couldn't free his sword hand, but his other he drew back as far as he could, and launched a solid punch to Ruiz's face. He struck him in the mouth, and Ruiz stumbled back, spitting blood, as Jack pushed away from the rail. He wasted no time in pursuing his advantage, slicing across to the right, meeting Ruiz's sword at shoulder height. Another attack from the opposite side, and Ruiz blocked again.  
  
They were nearly centered on the deck, beneath the mast. A fast series of lunges and blocks, swords flashing and ringing in the sunlight. Ruiz had recaptured the advantage, for while Jack was strong and determined, Ruiz was more skilled. Jack leapt to avoid a crushing blow to the knees. He ducked to miss a swipe at his neck. Ruiz moved in an ever-closing circle, his sword seeming to launch blows at lightning speed. Jack maneuvered, but knew he was on the retreat.  
  
He suddenly saw himself answering Ruiz's blows as if outside of his body, watching two men fight to the death. One was losing. He was tired and furthermore, part of him wanted to die. He'd lost everything of importance. _Not everything_ , a voice seemed to whisper. Despair closed in. He was tired of sailing against the wind, of railing at fate. If he were to die, so be it.  
  
There was an even more arrogant grin splitting Ruiz's harsh features. He knew he'd won. As he sidestepped, still circling around Jack like a python, he didn't look down at the deck.  
  
Jack thought he was fated to die, even welcomed it. It seemed fate had other ideas.  
  
For when Ruiz took a lunging step, all his weight on his right foot as he raised his sword for a deathblow, his boot landed in the pool of blood that had collected on the deck. Alberts' blood. Ruiz stepped in it, and it was slick over the scrubbed boards. His foot went out. His shoulders flew back. He fell, flat on his back, hard. His sword clattered to the deck, inches from his hand.  
  
There was a roaring noise in Jack's ears as he seemed to come back to himself, all in one rush. The roar was from his own throat, as he ran forward two steps and kicked the sword away from Ruiz's grasp, sending it flying across the deck. Ruiz lifted his head, looking stunned.  
  
The tip of Jack's sword was at his jugular.  
  
“On your knees,” Jack heard himself say, in a voice strangely cool and calm. Ruiz obeyed, and soon was on his hands and knees on the deck, blood still dripping from his mouth. Jack grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, pointing his sword down at Ruiz's throat.  
  
“You deserve to die slowly,” Jack said, the calm in his voice belying the turmoil he felt. “Ought to run you through and watch you, like you watched _him_. Ought to slice you across and let you hold your own guts in your greedy hands.”  
  
“Do it,” Ruiz said, a bloody hiss through his teeth. “You'll never forget it. It's like nothing else. The power. You want that, don't you, Sparrow? Power?”  
  
He was right, of course. Jack did want power. He enjoyed being in charge. Being in control. But power over other men's lives was never something he relished... until now.  
  
He breathed heavily, Ruiz's beady eyes upon him, suddenly thinking of a hundred other things. Barbossa. Bootstrap. Living men, dead men. Easter, waiting for him on the island. Alberts. And Alberts saying, _He who angers you, controls you_.  
  
An eye for an eye, another part of Jack answered. Ruiz was owed suffering. He'd caused the suffering of countless others. He should pay. Jack lowered his elbow, ready to strike a low blow, right through Ruiz's stomach. It would take quite a while for him to die that way. It was no less than he deserved.  
  
_He who angers you, controls you_.  
  
Jack closed his eyes. Easter floated there in his mind, watching him. Waiting for him. He would return to her, having become the same kind of monster that had killed her father. He would touch her with a brutal murderer's hands, hold her in the same arms that had shaken with the urge to disembowel the man in front of him. The man who Jack could hear chanting a prayer in Spanish under his breath.  
  
Jack's eyes shot open, and as he examined the sword in front of him, felt its weight in his hands, he knew what method of death he had chosen for the man or monster whose eyes were now closed, his head bowed in false penitence. The weapon was no fine, long executioner's sword, but it would have to do. Jack swallowed, eyeing Ruiz to make sure he remained still. “If God is just, he'll have far less mercy on you, amigo,” he said quietly, and then took the sword's handle in both hands, raising them high over his right shoulder. With all his strength, he brought it down in a swift arc, cleaving Ruiz's head from his neck in a single, terrible blow.  
  
Blood spattered the deck, Jack's clothes, his hands. He was afraid it would take two blows, or three, with the sword he had, but the blood pumping through his body had fueled more strength than he knew he had; Ruiz's death had been quick, and not without purpose. Jack took a deep breath in, and let it out, slowly, through his teeth, swallowing his queasiness at the grisly scene before him, the headless body now slumped at his feet, blood of his enemy mixed with blood of his friend. He stepped back.  
  
He turned. He walked two steps and closed his fist around Ruiz's ponytail, lifting and carrying the sickening weight. He didn't look at the rest; he marched toward the side and stood at the edge of the deck, where the men waited in the boat below.  
  
When they saw him, their eyes widened and their jaws fell open. Jack heard drops of blood splatter the deck below his left hand as he still held Ruiz's hair. He must have been a sight, covered with blood, most of it not his. He turned his back to climb down the rungs, and the men moved aside hurriedly to make space for him.  
  
“Cap'n,” Gibbs said, and it took Jack a moment to realize he was being addressed.  
  
“Aye?”  
  
“No one left aboard?”  
  
“No one,” Jack answered. There was a pause, and several men removed their hats mournfully. He waited a moment before saying, “We'll toast Captain Alberts tonight. Provided the ten of us - “ he glanced around at the men in the boat - “show ourselves to be men. Pirates, adventurers, soldiers, whatever you were before, matters not. You're pirates, now.” He held up Ruiz's head, dangling it by the ponytail. “Not a trophy. A tactic. I ascend first, with it, to let them know who they're dealing with. Shake them up. You gents follow. Kill anyone who resists. Restrain anyone who surrenders. We may need them later on. Are my orders clear?”  
  
“Yes, aye, sir,” came the men's replies.  
  
“Away, then,” Jack said, and they began to row.  
  
They charged aboard the other ship with a battle cry, of which Jack's was the loudest. He pulled himself up on deck and threw Ruiz's head across, watching as men stared in horror, turning their eyes back to him.  
  
When telling the story later, details of the battle were few; not water, here, but blood. He remembered the first throat he cut straight across. It was Montes. He remembered Gibbs at his back, their swords meeting others who circled around him. He remembered running a man through and tossing him overboard, and the splash his body made as it hit the water. The rage he'd contained when facing Ruiz was now unleashed, and he swung smoothly from one death to another, as though he were born to it. Bloody Spaniards, bloody slavers, bloody pirates. All the same.  
  
He remembered seeing Taylor, young man of his group, cut down, a brutal blow to the neck from behind. Jack took down his killer before Taylor had finished dying, his blood seeping into the cracks between the boards of the deck.  
  
He remembered that when it was done, there were seven of them left out of the ten. Ten of Ruiz'z crew had surrendered and begged mercy. Jack ordered them confined to the brig for the time being, and when they'd been taken below, he turned to Gibbs.  
  
“You're in charge, mate,” he said, hearing his voice sound oddly hollow. “I've got one more member of our crew to bring aboard.”  
  
“Aye,” Gibbs said with a nod, looking out toward the island, now clearly visible in the morning light.  
  
Jack stared at the island, barely seeing it, as the longboat drew closer and closer. Easter came out from among the trees, a hesitant walk and then a run as she saw who was in the boat. They pulled ashore and Jack climbed out. Easter stopped ten yards away as though she'd struck an invisible wall, staring wide-eyed at him.  
  
He was confused until he looked down, seeing that every inch of him was splattered with blood and dirt. He dragged his fingers across his forehead and found blood there, too. His shirt and tunic were sliced and his boots soaked with water and blood. “It's all right,” he finally said, seeing the terror in her expression. “It's all over.”  
  
“Where's Papa?” she said quietly, still maintaining her distance.  
  
Jack sighed, rubbing his temple with two fingers. “Love... your father... well, he's... I couldn't bring him back to you. 'M sorry.” He forced himself to open his eyes, to meet the fright in her gaze that rapidly turned to fury.  
  
“You said it would be _all right_!” Rage fractured her normally clear voice, as she raised a closed fist into the air. “You _liar_!”  
  
“Easter -“ Jack was cut off by something cool and hard striking him in the eye; it was the strand of pearls. She'd thrown them at him - quite accurately - and taken off for the trees, the sound of a sob drifting downwind as Jack sighed.  
  
He put the pearls back in their pouch, and turned to Wheaton, the man who'd accompanied him. “You'd better go after her,” he said, feeling suddenly numb. “I'll wait here.”  
  
“Oh... aye, Cap'n,” Wheaton said, sounding a little surprised, but no one had dared to raise an eyebrow at any of his orders since he'd stood in front of them holding Ruiz's severed head.  
  
They didn't question his orders later, either, when Gibbs asked him for a heading. Jack considered carefully, remembering Alberts' instructions, thinking of the little girl who was now hidden somewhere in the hold, though Jack assumed she'd come out when she got hungry enough. He had many other things to see to.  
  
He was still numb. He really had no desire to be or go anywhere. The Caribbean and the Orient could be one and the same, for all he cared. He'd lost two ships, too many men, and even the respect of one small girl, which oughtn't to have been a hard thing to keep. He didn't care where he ended up, in the least.  
  
But Alberts had asked that Easter be taken to this Chao Quin in Singapore. It was somewhere to go, and a reason to go there. He tried not to let on that he'd rather have his throat cut than have men depending on him, rather than try to lead again. “We sail for Singapore,” was all he said, and Gibbs said, “Aye.”  
  
Water. Weeks of water.  
  
Easter didn't speak to him. But it wasn't entirely personal; she didn't speak to anyone. She was silent. A ghost, wandering the ship, appearing at odd moments when Jack felt he was being watched. She disappeared just as easily, melting into the shadows. He ordered her fed, watched, made sure she was in her cabin at night. He didn't know if she slept. He didn't sleep much, and when he did he dreamt of Alberts' hearty laugh, his gray eyes alight with amusement. The same eyes, dull and lifeless, the laugh silenced.  
  
He'd burned everything he could spare from Ruiz's cabin. The navigational tools and charts he saved, together with a few books. The clothes he burned down in the galley. There were ledgers of transactions from at least five different African ports. He burned those, too. Underneath the logs of liquor and people that Ruiz had trafficked, Jack had found a large leather volume. A Bible.  
  
He stood in front of the galley hearthfire and turned it over in his hands. Ruiz's Bible; a monster's manual. There had been a time when Jack believed in God, or believed in something. But now it was dark, and he was alone. Anyone he'd ever called 'friend' was a traitor, or dead; he had nothing in the world, and no faith in anything outside of it. He stood there a long time, watching the flames, the smoke winding its way up the copper stack. He'd had quite a lot of rum, but it didn't help. Ironically, the fire was too small to throw himself upon, he noted with chagrin.  
  
Instead, he took the Bible and tossed that in. His stomach lurched as he did it; _strike me down_ , he thought, _and You'll do me a favor_. The flames licked greedily at the thick cover and thin pages, eagerly swallowing the expensive volume. Jack watched and waited. There was no clap of thunder, no instant death. It seemed his punishment was to have to go on living.  
  
They arrived in Singapore early one morning. It was controlled mostly by Portuguese and Dutch, but the native culture thrived, temples and gardens and horses, wide streets. Jack would have been fascinated, if he could have mustered any excitement about anything at all.  
  
He wanted to accomplish his purpose; finding this powerful friend of Alberts' and getting Easter squared away. She needed a parent. A nurse, a tutor, perhaps. No more pirates, no more ships and danger. He had no funds to provide this, so he could only hope Alberts was right in sending them to this Mr. Chao Quin.  
  
Easter still didn't speak as he took her by the elbow and disembarked, leaving Gibbs and the others to see to provisions. He didn't expect the crew to hold together. Then again, he didn't really care what happened afterward.  
  
“Chao Quin,” he said to a pleasant-faced fisherman by the dock, pressing a gold coin in his hand. The man smiled, gesturing down a street that led east from the docks, away from the thatched-roof boathouses and simple boats clustered around them. “Much obliged.” He thanked him even though the man probably didn't understand it.  
  
He pulled Easter along, even when she dragged her feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he assessed her condition. She was all right; not too thin, clean enough, though she looked tired. She looked up at him, and he quickly looked away. As they walked, they passed a number of places between tall palms with dark green leaves. Tea houses, markets, temples, brothels. Buildings became more elaborate the farther one got from the water, not that one was ever very far from the water. He smelled a sweet smoke at a certain point that he immediately recognized as opium. _Yes_ , he thought. As soon as the girl was situated, he'd have some of that.  
  
They followed the street to where it began to wind along a tree-lined path, the stately palms forming a border at the edge, shrubs and wildflowers beneath. The path ended at a garden, complete with pond, footbridge, and yards and yards of green grass, glistening in the sunshine. Birds chirped, and insects hummed. Water bubbled form unseen fountains. He had an odd sense of coming home, hearing the water, seeing the pond. Water flowed and had led him here. On the left, as he turned, he saw a statue as high as a man, decorated with gold ornaments and red and green paint. It was an elephant, its trunk raised triumphantly in the air.  
  
“Well,” he said to Easter, who had seen the statue, too. “I guess this is this place, eh?”  
  
He walked under the thatched outcropping of the roof, between the columns, to peer into the sprawling, one-story structure. A woman emerged from a rounded doorway and approached them. Her petite body was wrapped in an elaborate robe, decorated with gold threads and flowers of various colors. Her black hair was bound at the crown of her head, and when she moved toward them, she nearly floated. As she drew closer, Jack saw her face was square and not of great beauty. There were lines around her eyes, and she was far more graceful than her age would seem to permit. She was probably as old as Jack, if not older. She approached the two visitors, and inclined her head while narrowing her eyes at Jack.  
  
Jack knew when he was being sized up. “Erm... English?”  
  
“Yes?” the woman said, her voice a rich, low purr.  
  
“I'm a friend of Captain Alberts. I'm looking for Chao Quin. Is he here?”  
  
The woman smiled, and her eyes fell to the girl clinging to Jack's hand. The woman frowned, and then looked back at Jack, nodding her head slowly, once. “I am Chao Quin.”  
  
“You?” Jack stared, speechless for a moment. This was Alberts' great friend who would solve all their problems? It couldn't be. “But... you're a woman,” he said, with more disbelief than disapproval.  
  
Beside him, Easter suddenly burst into tears.  
  
* * * * *  
  
“And the rest... you've heard.” Jack then became quiet. Elizabeth had relented on her refusal to lie down, as she'd grown quite tired over the hour or so that Jack narrated, but she was riveted and so she had stretched out opposite him on the foot of the bed.  
  
He didn't want her to feel for him, but she did anyway. She thought about the little girl, who she already knew had grown up, as children will, often faster than anyone believes possible. She thought about what he'd said to Easter on the beach. She turned her head to look at Jack.  
  
“Have you ever cared for a grown woman the way you cared for that girl?”  
  
“Who said I cared for her? What's it matter?”  
  
Elizabeth, undeterred by his defensive retort, pressed forward. “However you regarded her, did you ever feel... as _much_... for a woman, say?”  
  
Jack seemed to swallow a chuckle, and Elizabeth wondered if there was more he hadn't told her. But all he said was, “Perhaps.”  
  
“Did it last? Did it... endure?”  
  
Jack thought a moment. “Yes... no. I don't know.”  
  
“When that little girl needed hope, needed to trust you, you gave her something of value to you. Would you do the same for a woman? Would you give her that pearl necklace, Jack?”  
  
He was silent for a moment, his eyes still closed. “That's a complicated question, because I can't give anyone what I haven't got.”  
  
“But if you did have it to give?”  
  
“Which, the love or the pearls?”  
  
“Both.”  
  
His eyes flicked open before shutting again. “The pearls are gone. You know I had to leave them in Singapore. Therefore, it's moot to discuss what I'd do with a thing if I had it, when I haven't got it and I never will.”  
  
“You could get them back.”  
  
He laughed once, bitterly. “Yes. In exchange for an entire ship, dozens of pounds of silver, the tusk of a white elephant - that's incredibly rare, mind you - and what else was it? Oh, casks of finest rum, exotic animal pelts - the list goes on. Not to mention the time, and risk involved. No pearl necklace is worth all that. However lucky.”  
  
Elizabeth regarded him coolly. “No woman, either?”  
  
Jack opened his eyes, turning his gaze to her. “That's not what I said. Why's love got to have a price on it?”  
  
“Love always has a price of sorts. Sacrifices. Losses. Surrenders. Either one can pay it, or one can't. Your friend Alberts understood that; why don't you?” She sat up, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ears. “I'd better be going.”  
  
“Oh, I see how it is, now.” Jack followed her as she got up off the bed. “Scores of women want fancy baubles in exchange for love. And you know what _those_ women are called.”  
  
She placed her hat on her head, her brow furrowing. “What 'those women' give isn't love. If it's something easily gotten, it's hardly worth having, isn't it?” She paused, looking him over in the lamplight from her place by the door. “Goodbye, Jack.”  
  
“Wait a bloody minute,” he said, closing the door as soon as she opened it. “For pity's sake, Elizabeth, you can't be serious.” His tone grew angrier, though he still spoke of the situation as though it involved someone else. “A man should risk everything to get the woman he loves, is that it? Pearls, and to go with them, my - _his_ \- still-beating heart served on a silver platter, eh?”  
  
She considered that a moment. “Perhaps a symbolic offering, considering what's happened.”  
  
There was a silence in which he could have apologized. It passed. She reached behind her to open the door again.  
  
“Don't go, darling, we haven't even gotten to the best part,” he said saucily, knocking the door shut with his palm, a glimmer of something dangerous in his eyes.  
  
“Let me out of here, now,” she replied through clenched teeth.  
  
“You really mean to leave me so unsatisfied?”  
  
“Go find one of those scores of women you spoke of.”  
  
“No,” he breathed, and pulled her forcefully into his embrace, his hands gripping her waist, hard, as he caught her mouth and delved inside, robbing her of breath and thought at once, and she tried to fight but ended up entangled with him, and her back struck the door as his hand fell to the back of her thigh and lifted, spreading her legs apart and lifting her against the door. She wanted to be furious at such manhandling... but at the same time, his touch on her was good, too damned good. She ached so much.  
  
His other hand was untucking her shirt and snaking beneath it, and before she could plan an escape, his hand closed around her bare breast and she groaned, miserably, wanting to lose herself to it but angry that he'd made a fool of her and thought to take this from her, too, from her own traitorous body. His warm, rough thumb brushed a nipple and she shuddered, feeling her back arch as he pressed his body all along her length.  
  
Then he stopped, backing up, and her foot came to rest on the floor suddenly. He caged her within his arms, brushing his lips across hers, and whispered, “Now why would I go and find a whore... when I could have a lusty woman here, now... for nothing?”  
  
He intended it to sting; it did. The last vestiges of passion faded rapidly and she shoved him back in disgust, watching as he laughed, to himself, really, her humiliation complete. She stared only for a moment before grabbing the doorknob and turning, yanking open the door and dashing out of it before anything worse could happen. The sound of the door slamming shut was their only goodbye.  
  
It occurred to her, as she ran out of the tavern and into the darkened street that at least her curiosity had been satisfied. She had wondered, when she thought of running, if he'd chase her.  
  
He didn't.  
  
  
  
  



End file.
